Approximations between the testimonial narratives in the works of Inge Scholl and Uwe Timm

Abstract

The present article proposes to compare the testimonial narratives of the authors Uwe Timm, in the book In my Brother´s Shadow: The marks of Nazism and Post-war in a German family, and Inge Scholl, in The White Rose, under the perspective of the role of the influence of the Second World War, which still affects not only direct participants, but also indirect participants and their descendants long after the end of the conflict. The ways of recovering memory and visiting past events, not only lived by the brothers, but also by the narrators and their contemporaries, bring us a critical perspective of the events and the vision of the brothers and their families about the events. While, during Nazism, Uwe Timm's brother was considered a hero, the Scholl brothers, summarily executed by the regime, became martyrs for having fought for resistance. The marks of events in the lives of Inge and Uwe do not show in the same way: we know that Inge was arrested because of her brothers, but nothing more. As for Uwe, the book In My Brother´s Shadow deals more with him than with his brother: issues such as his father's preference for Karl Heinz and the pride he felt in his eldest son appear at every moment in Timm's narration. The study will be supported by the studies by Sebald and Seligmann-Silva on the difficulty in recovering the memory of trauma. We also rely on Benjamin and Galle for this question. Bosi and LaCapra help to understand memory within the family, as well as intra-family relationships. Still on the issue of memory, there is also reference to Halbwachs, Straub and Nora.